Light footwear is popular with men, women and children for reasons of safety by rendering the wearers more visible at night, and for reasons of fashion. Such footwear typically includes at least one light source and preferably a plurality of light sources such as light emitting diodes, a source of power such as a battery, and a switch to connect the battery to the light source to illuminate them.
There are known in the art several different implementation of footwear lighting systems that produce flashing lights, these implementations typically rely on the opening and closing of a switch to create the flashing effect. Many different types of switches have been used to create this effect. For example, pressure switches, mercury switches, and spring switches have all been used to generate flashing lights in footwear. However, in all of these systems, flashing only occurs in response to the connection or disconnection of the circuit created by the opening and closing of the switch. Furthermore, in systems which a plurality of lights, the lights, are illuminated in unison, with all the lights being illuminated at the same time.
FIG. 1 shows a lighting circuit assembly for shoes according to the prior art. This lighting circuit assembly comprises a switch 2′, a control unit 3′ controlled by the switch 2′ to drive a plurality of LEDs (light emitting diodes) 5′, causing them to flash, and an oscillation resistor 4′ adapted for regulating the flashing speed of the LEDs 5′. The control unit 3′ is triggered by a triggering signal from the switch 2′ to drive the LEDs 5′, causing the LEDs 5′ to flash at one of four flashing modes. The flashing frequency of the LEDs 5′ is controlled at one per every 1 to 5 seconds.